Overlapping

Alex Jones is a raging buffoon.  

I dare say even his most ardent fans who may have chanced an honest assessment of him harbor some facsimile of this sentiment.  He lives in a fantasy world where he enjoys hyperactive omniscience.  Sound familiar?  Dogma in any form is ridiculous and cartoonish, a characteristic highlighted when it flows from the dramedy of Glenn Beck or Robert Tilton’s baby talk or Alex Jones’ frazzle-dazzle delusions.  I won’t go into the history of charismatic leeches.  You get the point.    

I know that pointing out the absurdity of talking heads drunk on egoism is nothing new or radical.  We all understand it.  However, as with everything political, there are legitimate issues that nevertheless overlap the unreasonable.  A friend hinted that some of my views might appear an endorsement of conspiracy thinking or at the very least, American style libertarianism.  So I’m going to set a few things straight.  I am in no way a conspiracy nut.  I’m typing it again with emphasis: I am in no way a conspiracy nut!  I do not believe in overarching plans to control the planet hatched by hooded men in star chambers.  What I do believe in is the inherent corruption of governments and rulers.  I am an Anarchist-Individualist who accepts that for the foreseeable and un-foreseeable future, there will be rulers and governments.  However, their existence doesn’t mean I should bow down to any of them for any reason on any issue.  And that statement alone leaves me the loneliest “libertarian” on the picket line.  Unfortunately, in my opposition to all government and law, I sometimes find myself on the same ground as wackjobs like Alex Jones, our only similarity being our shared opposition to specific tactics of one government in particular.  This same plight is evident daily with even more prominent folks who share many of my views, David Graeber vs. Occupy Wall Street for example.

So when I write something like:

Law enforcement agencies are now militarized beyond anything we've ever seen and they answer to no one and are filled with corruption and fiends. The Patriot Act now allows the government to force the press to divulge their sources. It is legal for the President to send unmanned drones to kill not only "enemy combatants" but also US citizens in a war that has no reasonable resolution. Our lawmakers have used the fear of terrorism to destroy the few defenses of freedom actually built into the Constitution. But I don’t blame government for these things.  I blame the American people.  The Constitution, as flawed as it is, is a document designed to protect the individual.  And the men who wrote it, as flawed as they were, wrote it as a structure to keep the government in fear of its people, not the other way around.  The American citizenry has allowed the government to tarnish it and pervert it beyond repair.

 …just remember my views boil down to one black and white issue--some might even point out the contradiction of my personal dogmatism: autonomy.  No one rules over my mind or my body while my heart still beats.  No one.